The downward spiral continues: Writing. Coffee. The perils of external combustion. Staying the course. Dogs and cats living together. Inspiration and creativity. Drugs, guns and fucking in the streets.

Monday, January 14, 2013

Monday Morning Post Mortem

The Truth was a bit of a surprise. I mean, yeah, the beginning started where I was expecting it to and it ended more or less where I expected it to end, but nothing in the middle was quite what I was expecting. In this case, a whole bunch of characters strolled out of my subconscious, slapped me around a bit and then took over the story. Marcel and Ed were both a complete surprise, I have no idea what flickering corner of my subconscious birthed them.

Also, my tentative outline would have resulted in something the length of a novel and not a slim paperback. I'm talking Tolstoy here. Once I twigged onto that, I had to do some outline tweakery to get it back into an appropriate length.

I still have some issues with the story. The ending is a bit contrived--if I were the sort of person who did second drafts, which I am not, I'd foreshadow it a little more in David's monologues. Or make the flying saucer club a little less serious about the prophecy, or give them more time to prepare or make them a little more serious about astronomy. Also, I'm not entirely sure it's clear that everything's taking place in 1984.

Overall, though, I'm happy with it. The bits that I liked most about writing it came out well. The parts I didn't like about writing it aren't that important to the story.

This is what I like about the writing process. Sometimes, you wind up with what you set out to do. Sometimes, your brain just gives you the middle finger and hands you something else altogether. You wind up channeling 10,000 words from, I dunno, the ether, and when someone asks where you get your ideas, all you can do is shrug and blame it on elves.

Looks like I'll have slightly more time to myself this week than last. This is good because I have no idea yet what I'm going to write for the next story. Could be cyberpunk, could be a ghost story. Might be something funny, or tragic or a western or a hard-boiled detective story set on the bottom of the ocean. Or all of that at once.